'That Cross's Children, Which Our Crosses Are': Imitatio Christi, Imitatio Crucis

How does one rightly name and discern imitatio Christi, imitatio crucis, and the relation between them? In one provocative attempt to answer this question, John Howard Yoder identifies Christ-imaging in vulnerable enemy love and rejects all other criteria. This essay reads the iconoclasm of Yoder's approach through poetry of the cross by William Mure and John Donne. It then proceeds to repair Yoder's Mure-like posture with Donne, as well as the writings of Margaret Ebner and Margery Kempe. These texts destabilise the dichotomies that sustain Yoder's iconoclasm and illustrate the inadequacy of a single criterion for imitatio Christi. Yet Kempe and Ebner's texts are also infected with violence such that they, too, need repair. Vulnerable enemy love thus returns as a negative condition for Christ-imaging, and Yoder's strong iconoclasm is moderated to a weaker iconoclasm that breaks images purporting to be Christ-like but are, in fact, violent.

Duke Scholars

Author Natalie Carnes Divinity School